Jeremy Popelka Casting Work

Jeremy Popelka has been casting hot glass since 1981. His work is in many museums and collections, and he teaches glass technique internationally. Please call or email to see more work.

Mollusk

Permanent Collection, Museum of Wisconsin Art

Edge

Permanent Collection, Museum of Wisconsin Art

Thaw, Blown Glass & Wood, 40" x 9 x 9"

Stephanie Trenchard Glass Casting

Stephanie Trenchard (site) enlists collective imagery to tell narratives and biographies in her cast glass sculptures and oil paintings, most often focusing on women artists. She is especially interested in how motherhood and partnership has effected their careers, and has created her own language of imagery and symbols that become totems, reappearing in many of her pieces.

Trenchard's process is to sculpt and paint objects in glass that tell illusory narratives. The sculpted pieces are encased in sand cast glass forms. The cast pieces are assembled in different sections, often stacked or nestled together and, on occasion, can be reconfigured. A successful work speaks to the viewer as if in an intimate conversation.

Trenchard has worked as a professional artist for over 30 years. She holds a BFA from Illinois State University. She works in a multitude of mediums including glass and oil painting. Along with her husband, artist Jeremy Popelka, Trenchard has owned and operated a working glass studio and small gallery since 1997, while continuing to create and show work nationally. She has taught workshops and classes at: Pratt Fine Art Center (Seattle 2010), University of Wisconsin, (Madison, 2009 & Stevens Point, 2014). She completed a residency at Ragdale, (Illinois 2010). Prizes include: Margaret Rahill Memorial Award (2014) & Best of Show Uptown Arts Fair, (MN 2000)

This piece is called Tertiary Color—a reference to the third tier of the color wheel where colors are more nuanced. It brings into view the names and work of 3 American women artists who are generally not the most visible in art history.

Alice Neel (1900-1984) was a visual artist known for oil painting and her portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers. She had a tumultuous personal life as she struggled to pursue her art and balance motherhood. Her brave self-portrait is a nude she did of herself in her 80’s— showing her own body in a natural way without any sort of flattering embellishment or positioning.

Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944) was a surrealist painter from the 1920s. Largely unknown, she was the only contemporary woman artist among the early 20th century artists that I recall studying in art history. This is my second piece to reference Stettheimer and my interest in her continues to grow.

Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989) was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painterin the post-World War II era. Frequently overshadowed by her more famous husband, she carved out a space for women artists in a period when women were viewed as accessories to their male counterparts. I deeply admire her self-portraits.

Florine Stettheimer was an American surrealist artist in the early twentieth century. In the center is Stettheimer’s self-portrait—based on Manet’s Olympia—which in turn was inspired by Titian’s Venus of Urbino. Stettheimer courageously paints her nude self portrait looking directly at the viewer much as men in the past, Manet and Titian, painted women as the object. She has made herself the subject.

Finally, it is also a self-portrait, as if I were an artist in the 1920’s.